The Internet and more specifically search engines have gained popularity amongst Internet users. A user accesses the Internet for a variety of information needs including, but not limited to, accessing technical documentations, searching for scientific papers and patent prior art, and so forth. In order to search for these documentations, the user typically runs a number of search queries, composed of keywords, on various known search engines such as Google™ search, Microsoft Bing™, AOL® search, and so forth. In response, the search engine returns a list of results typically listed in the order of their relevancy to the search query. The user then clicks on the relevant web-links to view the desired results.
Furthermore, various commercial entities (e.g., corporations, research based companies, patent related companies, etc.) usually provide Internet access to one or more users (employees, staff, guests, clients etc.) from a single IP address. Thus, from a search engine point of view, the queries which are submitted by the users from a given corporation usually appear as a huge group of queries submitted from the single IP address. In other words, all the queries submitted by the employees of a company are gathered into a single set of queries received from the single IP address. Such a set of queries may be traced by a third party to extract intelligence that may lead to undesirable breach of confidentiality.
In view of the foregoing, there is a need for a technique to hide various topics or themes that a user is performing the search on.